There was no faltering now, no fumbled words. With head up, singing—"Be jubilant, my feet—"
Sometimes he took Jean with him, but not always. "There are places that I don't like to have you go, my dear, but those are where I get my men."
At other times when he came out to where she sat in the car there would flash before his eyes the vision of his wife's face, as she, too, had once sat there, waiting—
Sometimes he took the children, and rode with them on a slow-moving barge from one lock to another, with the limousine meeting them at the end.
So he travelled the old paths, innocently, as he might have travelled them throughout the years.
Yet if he thought of those difficult years, he said never a word. He felt, perhaps, that there was nothing to say. He took to himself no credit for the things he was doing. If age and infirmity had brought to him a realization of all that he had missed, he was surely not to be praised for doing that which was, obviously, his duty.
Yet it gave him a new zest for life, and left Jean freer than she had been before. It left her, too, without the fear of him, which had robbed their relationship of all sense of security.
"You see, I never knew," she wrote in her memory book, "what might happen. I had visions of myself going after him in the night as Derry had gone and his mother. I used to dream about it, and dread it."
Yet she had said nothing of her dread to Derry in her smiling letters, and as men think of women, he had thought of her in the sick room as a guardian angel, shining and serene.
And now, faint and far came to the men in the cantonments the sound of battles across the sea. The bugles calling them each morning seemed to say, "Soon, soon, you will go, you will go, you will go—"
To Derry, listening, it seemed the echo of the fairy trumpets, "Trutter-a-trutt, trutter-a-trutt, you will go, you will go, you will go—"
It was strange how the thought of it drew him, drew him as even the thoughts of Jean his bride did not draw—. He remembered that years ago he had smiled with a tinge of tolerant sophistication over the old lines:
"I could not love thee, dear, so much,Loved I not honor more—"
Yet here it was, a truth in his own life. A woman meaning more to him than she could ever have meant in times of peace, because he could go forth to fight for her, his life at stake, for her. It was for her, and for other women that his sword was unsheathed.
"If only they could understand it," he wrote to Jean. "You haven't any idea what rotten letters some of the women write. Blaming the men for going over seas. Blaming them for going into it at all. Taking it as a personal offense that their lovers have left them. 'If you had loved me, you couldn't have left me,' was the way one woman put it, and I found a poor fellow mooning over it and asked him what was the matter. 'It isn't a question of what we want to do, it is a question of what we've got to do, if we call ourselves men,' he said. But she couldn't see that, she was measuring her emotions by an inch rule.
"But, thank God, most of the women are the real thing—true as steel and brave. And it is those women that the men worship. It is a masculine trait to want to be a sort of hero in the eyes of the woman you love. When she doesn't look at it that way, your plumes droop!"
And now the bugles rang with a clearer note—not, "You will go, you will go—" but, "Do not wait, do not wait, do not wait."
The cry from abroad was Macedonian. "Come over and help us!" It was to America that the ghosts of those fighting hordes appealed.
"Take up our quarrel with the foe,To you from falling hands we throwThe torch—be yours to hold it high.If ye break faith with us who die,We shall not sleep, though poppies growIn Flanders' field—"
Gradually there had grown up in the hearts of simple men a flaming response to that sacred charge. Men whose dreams had never reached beyond a day's frivolity, found springing up in their souls a desire to do some deed to match that of the other fellow who slept "in Flanders field."
"To you from falling hands we throw the torch—be yours to hold it high—," the little man who had measured cloth behind a counter, the boy who had sold papers on the streets, the bank clerk who had bent over his books, the stenographer who had been bound to the wheel of everlasting dictation, were lighted by the radiance of that vision, "to hold it high—."
"Gee, I never used to think," said Tommy Tracy, "that I might have a chance to do a stunt like that."
"Like what?" Derry asked.
Tommy found it a thing rather hard to express. "Well, when you've been just a common sort of chap, to die—for the other fellow—"
So men's bodies grew and their muscles hardened. But their souls grew, too, expanding to the breadth and height of the things which were waiting for them to do across the sea.
And one morning Derry was granted a furlough, and started home. He sent no word ahead of him. He wanted to come upon them unawares. To catch the light that would be on Jean's face when she looked up and saw him.
There was rain and more rain when at last he arrived in Washington. The trees as his taxi traversed the wide avenues showed clear green, melting into vistas of amethyst and gray. The parks as he passed were starred with the bright yellow and pinks of flowering shrubs. Washington, in spite of the rain, was as lovely as a woman whose color blooms behind a veil.
He came into the great house unannounced, having his key with him. The General was out for a ride, the children with him, Margaret and Emily and Jean away, the servants in the back of the house.
Derry, going up the stairs, two steps at a time, stopped on the landing with head uncovered to greet his mother.
Oh, lovely painted lady, is this the little white-faced lad you loved, the big bronzed man, fresh from hardships, strong in the sense of the thing he has to do?
No promise made to you could hold him now. He has weighed your small demands is the balance with the world's great need.
He did not tarry long. Straight as an eagle to its mate, he swept through the hall and knocked at the door of Jean's room. There was no response. He knocked again, turned the handle, entered, and found the room empty. The tin soldier on the shelf shouted, "Welcome, welcome—comrade," but Derry had no ears to hear. Everywhere were signs of Jean; her fat memory book open on her desk, the ivory and gold appointments of her dressing table, her pink slippers, her prayer book—his own picture with flowers in front of it as before a shrine.
"My dear, my darling," his heart said when he saw that. What, after all, was he that she should worship him?
Impatient, he rang for Bronson, and the old man came—bewildered, hurried, joyful. "It's a great surprise, sir, but it's good to see you."
"It's good to see you, Bronson. Where's Miss Jean?"
"At Miss Emily's shop, sir."
"As late as this?"
"Sometimes later. She tries to get home in time for dinner."
"Where's Dad?"
"Driving with the children, and the ladies are out on war work."
A year ago women had played bridge at this hour in the afternoon, but there was no playing now.
"Don't tell Dad that I am here. I'll come back presently with Mrs. Drake."
And now down the hall came an old gray dog, wild with delight, outracing Polly Ann, who thought it was a play and leaped after him—Muffin had found his master!
But Derry left Muffin, left Bronson, left Polly Ana, a wistful trio at the front door. He must find Jean!
The day was darkening, and a light burned far back on the Toy Shop. Derry, standing outside, saw a room which was the very wraith of the gay little shop as he had left it—with its white tables, its long counters piled high with finished dressings; the white elephants in a spectral row behind glass doors on the top shelf the only reminder of what it once had been.
He saw, too, a small nun-like figure behind the counter, a figure all in white, with a white veil banded about her forehead and flowing down behind.
All of her bright hair was hidden, her eyes were on the compresses that she was counting. It seemed to him that there was a sharpened look on the little face.
He had not expected this. He had felt that he would find her glowing as she had been on that first night when he had followed his father through the rain—his dream had been of crinkled copper hair, of silver and rose, of youth and laughter and lightness—.
Her letters had been like that—gay, sparkling—there had been times when they had seemed almost too exuberant, times when he had wondered if she had really waked to the seriousness of the great struggle, and the part he was to play in it.
Yet now he saw signs of suffering. He opened the door. "Jean," he cried.
With the blood all drained from her face, she stared at him as if she saw a specter—"Derry," she whispered.
With his strong arms, he lifted her over the counter. "Jean-Joan, Jean-Joan—"
When at last she released herself, it was to laugh through her tears. "Derry, pull down the shades; what will people think?"
He cared little what people would think. And, anyway, very few people were passing at that late hour in the rain. But he pulled them down, and when he came back, he held her off at arm's length. "What have you been doing to yourself, dearest? You are a feather-weight."
"Well, I've been working."
"How does it happen that you are here alone?"
"Emily had to go down to order supplies, and Margaret went to a Liberty Loan meeting. I often stay like this to count and tie."
"Don't you get dreadfully tired?"
"Yes. But I think I like to get tired. It keeps me from thinking too much."
He drew her to him. "Take off your veil," he said, almost roughly. "I want to see your hair."
Divested of her headcovering, she was more like herself, but even then he was not content. He loosed a hairpin here and there and ran his fingers through the crinkled gold. "If you knew how I've dreamed of it, Jean-Joan."
But he had not dreamed of the dearness of the little face. "My darling, you have been pining, and I didn't know it."
"Well, didn't you like my smiling letters?"
"So that was it? You've been trying to cheer me up, and letting yourself get like this."
"I didn't want to worry you."
"Didn't you know that I'd want to be worried with anything that pertained to you? What's a husband for, dearest, if you can't tell him your troubles?"
"Yes, but a soldier-husband, Derry, is different. You've got to keep smiling—"
Her lips trembled and she clung to him. "It is so good to have you here, Derry."
She admitted, later, that she had confided her troubles to her memory book. "There weren't any big things, really—just missing you and all that—"
He was jealous of the memory book. "I shall read every word of it."
"Not until you come back from the war—and then we can laugh at it together."
They fell into silence after that. With his arms about her he thought that he might not come back, and she clinging to him had the same thought. But neither told the other.
"Do you know," she said at last, sitting up and sticking the hairpins into her crinkled knot. "Do you know that it's almost time for dinner, and that the General will wonder where I am?"
"I told Bronson not to tell him."
"Oh, really, Derry? Let's make it a great surprise."
Providentially the General was late. He and the children came home to find the house quite remarkably illumined, and Margaret flushed and excited, and in white.
"Is it a party, Mother?" Teddy asked, lending his shoulder manfully to the General's hand, as, with the chauffeur on the other side, they helped the old man up the stairs.
"No, but on such a rainy night Bronson and I thought we'd have a little feast. Don't you think that would be fun?"
The General was tired. "I had planned not to come down again—"
"Please do," she begged,
Bronson, knowing his master's moods, was on tip-toe with anxiety. "I've your things all laid out, sir."
"Well, well, I'll see."
Teddy, somewhat out of breath as they reached the top landing was inspired to remark, "We'll be 'spointed if you don't come down—"
"You want me, eh?"
"Yes, I do. There isn't any other man—"
The General chuckled. "Well, that's reason enough—. You can count on me, Ted, for masculine support."
The table was laid for six. Teddy appearing presently in the dining room pointed out the fact to Bronson, who was taking a last look.
"Is Margaret-Mary coming down?"
"She may later, for the sweets."
"Those aren't her spoons and forks."
"Well, well," said Bronson, "so they aren't"; but he did not have them changed.
The General in his dinner coat, perfectly groomed, immaculate, found Jean in rose and silver waiting for him.
"How gay we are," he said, and pinched her cheek.
Teddy in white linen and patent leathers also approved. "You've got on your spangly dwess, and it makes you pwetty—"
"Oh, Ted, is it just my clothes that make me pretty?"
"I didn't mean that. Only tonight you're so nice and—shining."
She shone, indeed, with such effulgence, that it was a wonder that the General did not suspect. But he did not, even when she said, "We have a surprise for you."
"For me, my dear?"
"Yes. A parcel—it came this afternoon. We want you to untie the string."
"Where is it?" Teddy demanded.
"On the table in the blue room."
Teddy rushed in ahead of the rest, came back and reported, "It's a big one."
It was a big one, cone-shaped and tied up in brown paper. It was set on a heavy carved table, a length of tapestry was under it and hid the legs of the table.
"It looks like a small tree," the General remarked. "But why all this air of mystery?"
He was plainly bored by the fuss they were making. He was tired, and he wanted his dinner.
But Jean, in an excited voice, was telling him to cut the string, and Bronson was handing him a knife.
And then—the paper dropped and everybody was laughing, and Teddy was screaming wildly and he was staring at the khaki-clad upper half of a tall young soldier whose silver-blond hair was clipped close, and whose hand went up in salute.
"It's Cousin Derry. It's Cousin Derry," Teddy was shouting, and Margaret-Mary piped up, "It's Tousin Dee."
Derry stepped out from behind the table, where leaning forward and wrapped up he had lent himself to the illusion, and put both hands on the General's shoulders. "Glad to see me, Dad?"
"Glad; my dear boy—" It was almost too much for him.
Yet as supported by his son's arm, they went a moment later into the dining room, he had a sense of renewed strength in the youth and vigor of this youth who was bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. If his own feet could not march here were feet which would march for him.
There were flowers on the table, most extravagantly, for these war times, orchids; and there were tall white candles in silver holders.
Jean shining between the candles was a wonder for the world to gaze upon. Derry couldn't keep his eyes off her. This was no longer a little nun of the Toy Shop, yet he held the vision of the little nun in his heart, lest he should forget that she had suffered.
He talked to them all. But beating like a wave against his consciousness was always the thought of Jean. Of the things he had to tell her which he could tell to no one else. He knew now that he could reveal to her the depths of his nature. He had withheld so much, fearing to crush her butterfly wings, but she was not a butterfly. They had been playing at cross purposes, and writing letters that merely skimmed the surface of their emotions. It had taken those moments in the Toy Shop to teach them their mistake.
Teddy, feeling that the occasion called for a relaxing of the children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard rule, asked questions.
"How long can you stay?"
"Ten days."
"Are you going to Fwance?"
"I hope so."
"Mother says I've got to pray for the Germans."
"Teddy," Margaret admonished.
"Well, I rather think I would," Derry told him. "They need it."
This was a new angle. "Shall you hate to kill them?"
There was a stir about the table. The old man and the women seemed to hang on Derry's answer.
"Yes, I shall hate it. I hate all killing, but it's got to be done."
He spoke presently, at length, of what many men thought of war.
"We are red-blooded enough, we Americans, but I think we hate killing the other man rather more than we fear being killed. It's sickening—bayonet practice. Killing at long range is different. The children of my generation were trained to tender-heartedness. We looked after the birds and rescued kittens, and were told that wars were impossible—long wars. But war is not impossible, and it has come upon us, and we are finding that men must be brave not merely in the face of losing their own lives, but in the face of taking the lives of—others. I sometimes wonder what it must have seemed to those Germans who went first into Belgium. Some of them must have been kind—some of them must have asked to be shot rather than be set at the work of butchery.
"I sometimes think," he pursued, "that if we could give moving pictures of the war just as it is—in all its horror and hideousness—show the pictures in every little town in every country in the world, that war would stop at once. If the Germans could see themselves in those towns in Belgium—if the world could see them. If we could see men mowed down—wounded, close up, as our soldiers see them. If our people should be forced to look at those pictures, as the people of war-ridden countries have been forced to gaze upon realities, money would be provided and men provided in such amounts and numbers that those who began the war would be forced to end it on the terms the world would set for them.
"The fact that men are going into this war in spite of their aversion to killing shows the stuff of which they are made. It is like drowning kittens," he smiled a little. "It has to be done or the world would be overrun by cats."
Teddy, wide-eyed, was listening. "Do people drown kittens?" he asked. "Oh, I didn't think they would." It was a sad commentary on the conditions of war that he was more heavily oppressed by the thought of drowned little cats than by the murder of men.
"My dear fellow," Derry said, "we won't talk about such things. I must beg your pardon for mentioning it."
The talk flowed on then in lighter vein. "Ralph Witherspoon is in town," Jean vouchsafed. "He had a bad fall and was sent home to get over it. Mrs. Witherspoon has asked me there to dine. I shall take you with me."
"I didn't know that people were dining out in these times."
"Mrs. Witherspoon prides herself on her conservation menus. She says that she serves war things, that she gives us nothing to eat that the men need, and she likes her friends about her."
"We shall miss Drusilla," Derry said. "I've been worried about her since the Huns recaptured those towns in France."
"Daddy wrote that she is not far from his hospital, doing splendid work, and that the men adore her."
"They would," said Derry. "She is a great-hearted creature. I can fancy her singing to them over there. You know what a wonder she was at that sort of thing—"
After dinner the General was eager to have his son to himself. "The women will excuse us while we smoke and talk."
Derry's eyes wandered to Jean. "All right," he said with an effort.
The General's heart tightened. His son was his son. The little girl in silver and rose was in a sense an outsider. She had not known Derry throughout the years, as his father had known him. How could she care as much?
Yet she did care. He realized how Derry's coming had changed her. He heard her laugh as she had not laughed in all the weeks of loneliness. She came up and stood beside Derry, and linked her arm in his and looked up at him with shining eyes.
"Isn't he—wonderful?" she asked, with a catch of her breath.
"Oh, take her away," the old gentleman said. "Go and talk to her somewhere."
Derry's face brightened. "You don't mind?"
"Of course not," stoutly. "Bronson says that the rain has stopped. There's probably a moon somewhere, if you'll look for it."
Margaret went up to put the children to bed. Emily, promising to come back, withdrew to write a letter. The old man sat alone.
He limped into the blue room, and gazed indifferently around on its treasures. Once he had cared for these plates and cups—his quest for rare porcelains had been eager.
And now he did not care. The lovely glazed things were for the eye, not for the heart. He would have given them all for the touch of a loving hand, for a voice that grew tender—.
There was the patter of little feet on the polished floor. Margaret-Mary in a diminutive blue dressing gown and infinitesimal slippers, with her curls brushed tidily up from the back of her neck and skewered with a hairpin, came over and laid her hand on his knee. "Dus a 'itte 'tory?" she asked ingratiatingly. She adored stories.
He picked her up, and she curled herself into the corner of his arm.
Her mother found her there. "Mother's naughty little girl," she said, "to run away—"
"Let her stay," the General begged. "Somehow my heart needs her tonight."
Four days of Derry's furlough had passed, four palpitating days, and now the hours that the lovers spent together began to take on the poignant quality of coming separation. Every moment counted, nothing must be lost, nothing must be left unsaid, nothing must be left undone which should emphasize their oneness of thought and purpose.
They read together, they walked together, they rode together, they went to church together. If they included the General in their plans it was because they felt his need of them, not theirs of him. They lived in a world created to survive for ten days and then to collapse like a pricked bubble—
And it was because of the dread of collapse that Jean began to plan a structure of remembrance which should endure after Derry's departure.
"Darling," she said, "there are only six days—What shall we do with them?"
THE FIFTH DAY
It was Sunday, and in the morning they went dutifully to church. They ate their luncheon dutifully with the whole family, and motored dutifully afterwards with the General. Then at twilight they sought the Toy Shop.
They had it all to themselves, and they had told Bronson that they would not be home for dinner. So Jean made chocolate for Derry as she had made it on that first night for his father. They toasted war bread on the electric grill, and there were strawberries.
They were charmed with their housekeeping. "It would have been like this," Derry said—all eyes for her loveliness, "if you had been the girl in the Toy Shop and I had been the shabby boy—"
Jean pondered. "I wonder if a big house is ever really a home?"
"Not ours. Mother tried to make it—but it has always been a sort of museum with Dad's collections."
"Do you think that some day we could have a little house?"
"We can have whatever you want." His smile warmed her.
"Wouldn't you want it, Derry?"
"If you were in it."
"Let's talk about it, and plan it, and put dream furniture in it, and dream friends—"
"More Lovely Dreams?"
"Well, something like that—a House o' Dreams, Derry, without any gold dragons or marble balls or queer porcelain things; just our own bits of furniture and china, and a garden, and Muffin and Polly Ann—" Her eyes were wistful.
"You shall have it now if you wish."
"Not until you can share it with me—"
And that was the beginning of their fantastic pilgrimage. In the time that was left to them they were to find a house of dreams, and as Jean said, expansively, "all the rest."
"We will start tonight," Derry declared. "There's such a moon."
It was the kind of moon that whitened the world; one swam in a sea of light. Derry's runabout was a fairy car. Jean's hair was molten gold, her lover's pale silver—as with bare heads, having passed the city limits, they took the open road.
It was as warm as summer, and there were fragrances which seemed to wash over them in waves as they passed old gardens and old orchards. There was bridal-wreath billowing above stone fences, snow-balls, pale globes among the green, beds of iris, purple-black beneath the moon.
They forded a stream—more silver, and a silver road after that.
"Where are we going?" Jean breathed.
"I know a house—"
It was a little house set on top of a hill, where indeed no little house should be set, for little houses should nestle, protected by the slopes back of them. But this little house was set up there for the view—the Monument a spectral shaft, miles away, the Potomac broadening out beyond it, the old trees of the Park sleeping between. This was what the little house saw by night; it saw more than that by day.
It was not an empty house. One window was lighted, a square of gold in a lower room.
They did not know who lived in the house. They did not care. For the moment it was theirs. Leaving the car, they sat on the grass and surveyed their property.
"Of course it is ours," Jean said, "and when you are over there, you can think of it with the moon shining on it."
"I like the sloping roof," her lover took up the refrain, "and the big chimney and the wide windows."
"I can sit on the window seat and watch for you, Derry, and there will be smoke coming out of the chimney on cold days, and a fire roaring on the hearth when you open the door—"
They decided that there ought to be eight rooms—, and they named them. The Log-Fire Room; The Room of Little Feasts; the Place of Pots and Pans—
"That's the first floor," said Jean.
"Yes."
The upper floor was harder—The Royal Suite; The Friendly Boom, for the dream maid of all work; The Spare Chamber—
"My grandmother had a spare chamber," Jean explained, "and I always liked the sound of it, as if she kept her hospitality pressed down and running over—"
Derry, who had written it all by the light of the moon, held his pencil poised. "There is one more," he said, "the little room towards the West—"
Jean hesitated for the breadth of a second. "Well, we may need another," she said, and left it nameless.
The door opened and a man came out. If he saw them, they meant nothing to him—a pair of lovers by the wayside; there were many such.
He paced back and forth on the gravel walk. They could hear the crunch of it under his feet. They saw the shining tip of his cigar—smelt its fragrance—.
Again the door opened, to frame a woman. She called and her voice was young.
"Dearest, it is late. Are you coming in?"
His young voice answered. His far-flung cigar-end trailed across the darkness, his eager steps gave quick response—the door was shut—.
"Oh, Derry, I'd call you like that—-"
"And I should come."
The light went out on the lower floor, and presently in a room above a window was illumined.
THE SIXTH DAY
A dream house must have dream furniture. There are old shops in Alexandria, where, less often than in earlier years, one may find treasures, bow-legged chairs and gate-legged tables, yellowed letters written by famous pens, steel engravings which have hung in historic halls, pewter and plate, Luster and Sèvres, Wedgwood and Willow, Chippendale and Hepplewhite, Adams and Empire, everything linked with some distinguished name, everything with a story, real or invented. One may buy an ancestor for a song, or at least the portrait of one, and silver with armorial bearings, and no one will know if you do not tell them that your heirlooms have come from a shop.
And Alexandria, as all the world knows, is reached from Washington by motor and trolley, train or ferry.
It was by ferry that the lovers preferred to go in the glory of this May morning, feeling the breeze fresh in their faces as with a motley crowd they stood on the lower deck and looked towards the old town.
Thus they came to the wharves, flanked by ancient warehouses in a straggly row along the water line. The windows of these ancient edifices had looked down on Revolutionary heroes, the old brick walls had echoed to the sound of fife and drum—the old streets had once been thronged by men in blue and buff. Since those days the quaint little city had basked in the pride of her traditions. She had tolerated nothing modern until within this very year she had waked to find that her red-coat enemy was now her friend, that the roads which George Washington had travelled were being trod once more by marching men; that in the church where he had worshipped prayers were being said once more for men in battle.
And into the shops, with their storied antiques, drifted now men in olive-drab and men in blue, and men in forester's green, who laughed at the flint locks and powder horns, saluted the Father of his Country whenever they passed his picture, gazed with reverence on ancient swords and uniforms, dickered for such small articles as might be bought out of their limited allowances, and paid in the end, cheerfully, prices which would have been scorned by any discriminating buyer.
"There must be a table for the Log-Fire Room," Jean told her husband, "and a fire-bench, not too high, and a big chair for you, and another chair for me—"
"And a stool for your little feet—."
"And a desk for you, Derry."
"And an oval mirror with a gold frame, for me to see your face in, Jean-Joan—"
Then there was a four-poster bed with pineapples, and an Adams screen, an old brass-bound chest, the most adorable things in Sheffield and crystal, and to crown it all, a picture of George Washington—a print, faintly colored, with the country's coat of arms carved on the frame.
Yet not one thing did they buy except a quite sumptuous and splendid marriage coffer which suggested itself at once as the only wedding present for Emily.
The price took Jean's breath away. "But, dearest—"
"Nothing is too good for Emily, Jean-Joan."
That night Derry drew a picture of the house in Jean's memory book.
"I'll put a garden in front—"
"How can you put in a garden, Derry, when there isn't one?"
She wore a lace robe and a lace cap, and there were pink ribbons threaded in, and her cheeks were pink. "You can't put in a garden until there is one, Derry. When we find it, it must be a lovesome garden, with the old-fashioned flowers, and a fountain with a cupid—and a fish-pond."
With this settled, he proceeded, with facile pen, to furnish the house. There was the Log-Fire Room, with the print of George Washington over the mantel, with Jean's knitting on the table; Muffin on one side of the fire, and Polly Ann on the other. He even started to put Jean in one of the big chairs, but she made him rub it out. "Not yet, Derry. You see, I am not living in it yet. I am living here, with you alive and loving—"
He caught her to him. "When you are away from me," she whispered, "I'll live in it—and you'll be there—and I shall never feel alone—"
Yet later, Derry coming in unexpectedly after a talk with his father, found her sobbing with her head on the fat old book.
"My darling—"
"It isn't that I am unhappy, Derry—. It is just for that one little minute, I wanted it to be real—"
THE SEVENTH DAY
It was on the morning of the seventh day that a letter came from Drusilla.
"Dear Babes in the Wood:
"I am writing this to tell you that the next time I see Captain Hewes, I am going to marry him. That sounds a little like a hold-up, doesn't it? But it is the way we are doing things over here. He has wanted it for so long, and I am beginning to know that I want it, too. It has been hard to tell just what was really best in the face of all that is happening. It has seemed sometimes as if it were a sacrilege to think of love and life in the midst of death and destruction.
"I shan't have any trousseau; I shan't have a wedding journey. He will just blow in some day, and the chaplain will marry us, and the little old curé of this village will give us his blessing.
"I never expected to be married like this. You know the kind of mind I have. I must always see the picture of myself doing things, and there had always been a sort of dream of some great church with a blur of gold light at the far end, and myself floating up the aisle in a cloud of white veil, and a hushed crowd and the organ playing.
"And it won't be a bit like that. I shall wear a uniform and a flannel shirt, and I'll be lucky if my boots are not splashed with mud. It will seem queer to be married with my boots on, as men died in old romances.
"Perhaps by the time this reaches you, Drusilla Gray will be Drusilla Hewes, and so I ask your blessing, and your prayers.
"I should never have asked for your prayers a year ago. I should have been thanking you for your wedding present of glass and silver, and asking you to dine with me on Tuesday or Thursday as the case might be. But now, the only thought that holds me is whether God will give my Captain back to me, and the hope that if not, I may have the strength to bear it—.
"I am sure that Derry will feel the sublimity of it all when he comes—death is so near, yet so little feared; the men know that tonight or tomorrow they may be beyond the shadows, and it holds them to something bigger than themselves.
"But be sure of this, my dears, that when Derry goes the seas will not part you—. Spirit touches spirit, space has nothing to do with it. Often when I am alone, the Captain comes to me, speaks to me, cheers me; I think if he should die in battle, he would still come.
"If ever I have a home of my own, I shall build an altar not to the Unknown God but to the God whom I had lost and have found again. I go into old churches here to pray, and it is no longer a matter of feeling, no longer a matter of form, it is something more than that.
"And now I can't ask you to dance at my wedding, but I can ask you to wish me happiness and a long life with my lover, or failing that, the strength to give him up—"
She signed herself, "Always loving you both, DRUSILLA."
"Such a dear letter," said Jean.
"And such a different Drusilla. Do you think that the Drusilla of the old days would have built an altar?"
And it was because of Drusilla's letter that Derry took Jean that afternoon to the great Library with the gold dome and guided her to a corridor made beautiful by the brush of an artist who had painted "The Occupations of the Day"; in one lunette a primitive man and woman knelt before a pile of stones on which burned a sacred flame. Above them was blue sky—flowers grew within reach of their hands—the fields stretched beyond.
"We must build an altar, dearest."
"In our hearts—"
"And in our House of Dreams—"
THE EIGHTH DAY
There was no getting out of the Witherspoon dinner, and it was when Ralph greeted Jean that he said to her, "You are lovelier than ever."
She smiled at him. "It is because my heart is singing—"
"Do you feel like that?"
She nodded. "In three days the song will cease—the lights will go out, and the curtain will fall—the end of the world will come."
"Drake goes in three days?"
"He goes back to camp. I don't expect to see him again before he sails."
"Lucky fellow."
"To go?"
"To have you."
"Please don't."
"Let me say this—that I acted like a cad; I'd like to feel that you've forgiven me."
"I have forgotten, which is better, isn't it?"
"How sweet you are—and all the sweetness is Derry's. Well, when I go over, will you pray for me, my dear?"
He was in dead earnest. "There are so few women—who pray—but I rather fancy that you must—"
All around them was surging talk. "How strange it seems," Jean said, "that we should be speaking of such things, here—"
"No," Ralph said, "it is not strange. I have a feeling that I shan't come back."
Alma Drew on the other side of him claimed his attention. "War is the great sensational opportunity. And there are people who like patriotism of the sound-the-trumpet-beat-the-drum variety—"
"You said that rather cleverly, Alma," Ralph told her, "but you mustn't forget that was the kind of patriotism our forefathers had, and it seemed rather effective."
"Men aren't machines," Jean said hotly. "They are flesh and blood, and so are women—a fife and drum or a bag-pipe means more to them than just crude music; the blood of their ancestors thrilled to the sound."
"As savages thrill to a tom-tom."
They stared at her.
"It is all savage," Alma said, crisply and coolly, "We are all murderers. We are teaching our men to run Germans through with bayonets, and trying to make ourselves think that they aren't breaking the sixth commandment. Yet in times of peace, when a man kills he goes to the electric chair—"
It was Derry who answered that. "If in times of peace I heard you scream and saw you set upon by thieves and murderers, and stood with my hands in my pockets while you were tortured and killed, would you call my non-interference laudable?"
"That's different."
"It is the same thing. The only difference lies in the fact that thousands of defenceless women and little children are calling. Would you have the nation stand with its hands in its pockets?"
Alma, cold as ice, challenged him: "Why should they call to us? We'll be sorry some day that we went into it."
Out of a dead silence, a man said: "Not long ago, I went into a sweet shop in England. A woman came in with two children. They were rosy children and round. They carried muffs.
"She bought candy for them—and when she gave it to them, I saw that they had—no hands—"
A gasp went round the table.
"They were Belgian children."
That night Jean said to Derry with a sternness which set strangely upon her, "We must have friends in our House of Dreams. The latchstrings will always be out for people like Emily and Marion, and Drusilla, and Ulrich and Ralph—"
"Yes—"
"But not for Hilda and Alma."